Speakers

Novel Bioengineered MEMS technology for New Aging Study

With the increasing aging of mankind worldwide, aging study has become very important. Senescent cells are generally created in vitro via prolonged division in culture since replicative senescence is defined as a state in which normal somatic cells lose their replicative capacity, causing irreversible growth arrest. The necessity for many subculture steps may, however, result in a high degree of heterogeneity, and when studying such cultures the ensemble averaging effect can make it difficult to elucidate cellular aging mechanisms. One of the most representative characteristics in aging is the increase of cell surface area. We thought that the increase of the cell surface area will affect the increase of cell volume; thereby hypothesizing that larger cells might exhibit more remarkable senescent phenotypes even in same passaged culture dish, even though both size cohorts had been passaged in the same clonal culture environment.

In another asepct, one of the representatvie changes in aging is the sarcopenia, which significantly affects the mobility and physiological activity of the elderly. Functional improvement of aged skeletal muscle cells with minimizing side effects, therefore, is critically important to maintain the quality of life for the elderly.

In this talk, we introduce a microfluidic filter with uniform fluid profile to isolate aging cells and a bioelectronic device for high throughput electrical stimulation. Based on these technologies, this will be discussed how we can move closer to aging personalized therapy.